Why do I take photos of myself, people I cherish, and people I spent memorable moments with, then post them online?
Because I want to memorialize the moment I felt special. Before the memory gets filed into the recess of my mind, I want to hold on to the feeling evoked by the people I spend time with — frozen in time in photos.
But when other people share the same photo of you with people you don’t know–to people whose hands you don’t want your photos to fall into–what should you do?
Who owns the photos?
I remembered being associated with a promiscuous woman, which I didn’t know at the time, and I later discovered how she shared photos of me with men she used to date or flirt with (some who are captive to perversion).
Do I want my face archived on their mobile devices?
No! Neither do I want to be associated with such people. I never wanted a photo of me to fall under their possession, inside the gallery of their inboxes. I wonder if they used my photos in their perversion and twisted my glory in their perverted minds.
But was I given a say on what other people should do with the photos they took (involving me) using their mobile devices (even the ones I openly shared online)?
Did I even give them a say about what happens to the photos I took–the photos with their faces on them too?
Our digital footprint continuously expands because on top of the photos we allow ourselves to share online, we don’t have control over what happens to photos of ourselves possessed by our friends, colleagues, families, and, yes, even strangers.
Thinking about this lack of autonomy about what happens to data I don’t want to be shared online, I felt the need to ask the person I recently took a photo with if they’re okay that I’d be posting it online. And with their permission, I felt more comfortable doing the publicity on the world wide web.
Perhaps, this should turn into a habit. That I should never treat visual data of other people’s mine just because I used my device to memorialize the moment.
And perhaps, you should too.
The next time you take photos of yourself with other people in it, ask yourself, who owns the photos?
jessa 